40 Ngt allJurS ! are created f equal .... .. ,4.'1 "'\.. " ... *' 4Y ,." \ .1 . ....' ;J^ -4 fj .. } ? .. .. .. \ . . t 1. " .x " tt, \ .. 1 t '.., ,'t ". "f 1 \ .># } ,1 t 1 t ." .-, "- , ,t --' l' Silk poplin coat with snap in/snap out cashmere or quilted lining. Natural demi-buff Lunaraine@ Mink Trim. '} \ Î Exclusive design custom-made in our workrooms GAJftêd Iler Ben TqylaI1fulS 345 Seventh Avenue · New York 10001 (212) 753-7700 · 24th Floor Fax: (212) 643-2082 Please call for appointment FILMS OPENING THIS WEEK MOVIE5 IN BRIEF CARlITO'S WAy-Brian De Palma's new film, based on two novels by New Y or k State Supreme Court Justice Edwin Torres. Al Pacino plays a Puerto Rican gangster from Harlem who is released from prison on a technicality and tries to go straight. With Sean Penn and Penelope Ann Miller. Open- ing November 10. My LIFE-A drama, written and directed by Bruce Joel Rubin (author of the creenplay for ((Ghost' '), about the emotional ody ey of a Beverly Hills executive (Michael Keaton) who learns that he is dying of cancer. His wife (Nicole Kidman) is pregnant, and he begins making an autobiographical video for his unborn child. Opening November 12 THE PHilADELPHIA EXPERIMENT 2-Brad Johnson travels back in time to make sure that Nazi Germany loses the Second World War Di- rected by Stephen Cornwell. Opening No- vember 12 THE PIANO-A mute woman (Holly Hunter) leaves Scotland, with her daughter and a piano, to be a mail-order bride in nine- teenth-century colonial New Zealand. The groom (Sam Neill) wants her but not the piano and his neighbor (Harvey Keitel) wants both 'the piano and her. Written and di- rected by Jane Campion. Hunter was named Best Actress and the movie was co-winner of the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Opening November 12. RADIO STORIEs-The American première of Span- ish director José Luis Saenz de Heredia's 1955 comedy about a radio quiz show. With Francisco Rabal. In Spanish. Opening No- vember 12 THE THREE MUSKETEERs-The latest version of the Alexandre Dumas classic With Charlie Sheen as Aramis Kiefer Sutherland as Athos, Chris , O'Donnell as D'Artagnan, Oliver Platt as Porthos Tim Curry as Cardinal Richelieu, and Rebecca De Mornay as Milady de Win- ter. Directed by Stephen Herek. Opening November 12. CURRENT FILMS (The following notes are byAnthonyLane, Ter- rence Rafferty, and Michael Sragow. If a movie has been reviewed in The Current Cznema, the date of its review is gzvenJ THE AGE OF INNOCENcE-Martin Scorsese returns to form with this hectic adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel. Everything looks right, from roast duck to waistcoats, but the movie has no ambitions to be a costume museum; it homes in on the passions that had to be veiled by good manners. As the film begins-a showy, overwhelming scene at the opera-we see Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) about to announce a perfect match with the young May WeIland (Winona Ryder). Such perfec- tion is a prison, with no hope of escape, and the vigorous sadness of Day-Lewis tel.ls t e whole story; he wiU never: rebel, but In hIS eyes you see him wishing he could. Less frui tful is the casting of Michelle Pfeiffer as May's older cousin, the mysterious Countess Olenska with whom Archer falls hopelessly in love.' With her silly blond curls, Pfeiffer looks more plaintive than the dark exotic of Wharton's imagination -A.L. (Reviewed in our issue of 9/13/93) (Village Theatre VII, Orpheum VII, Worldwide Cinemas, and Metro Cinema. . . _ (jJ Coronet; through Nov. 11.) A BRONX TALE-Robert De Niro's debut as a director. The plot turns on the tussle for a boy's soul: De Niro plays Lorenzo, whose son Calogero is spending too much time with a local hood named Sonny (Chazz Palminteri) and his band of merry men-Tony Toupee, Eddie Mush, and so forth. The tale, se in 1960, was originally written by Palmin en as a five-minute monologue, then grew Into a full stage performance before becoming a screenplay- by now it feels tired, and you can't help' feeling that the material has al- ready been worked to death onscreen. But Lillo Brancato give!:; a silky, striking perfor- mance as the teen-age Calogero.-A.L. (Vil- lage Theatre VII, Orpheum VII, Chelsea Cinemas and Criterion Center.. (jJ Beek- , man, dnd 84th Street Sixplex; through Nov. 11.) COMBINATION PlATTER-"Mixed appetIzers" is more like it: in lieu of d proper meal, the audience grazes on a sorted tidbits of racial and ethnic tension and comedy in a Chinese restaurant in Queens. The central story, about a naïve waiter from Hong Kong 0- eff Lau) who hopes to marry an American to get his green card, has neither punch nor a sati?fy- ing punch line. The producer-director-wnter, Tony Chan, wants the hero's halting manner to be sympathetic and humorous in a low- key way. But by the time the waiter admits "I go to the movies to sleep," viewers know too well what he means. Edwin Baker col- laborated with Chan on the script In En- glish, Mandarin, and Cantonese.-M.S. (Vil- lage East Cinemas, 68th St. Playhouse, and Worldwide Cinemas.) COOL RUNNINGS-The filmmakers take the ad- venture of the 1988 Jamaican Olympic bob- sled team and turn it into a kiddie movie- almost a toddler movie Except for a few piquant sports details, they fictionalize ev- erything and play it for easy laughs and melodrama; they even sink to portraying East German bobsledders a racist villains. Leon, Doug E. Doug, Rawle D. Lewi , and Malik Y oba are the teammates; John Candy is their disreputable American coach Jon Turteltaub directed.-M.S. (19th Street East 6, 57th St. Playhouse, Olympia, and Embassy.) DEMOLITION MAN-Woody Allen's "Sleeper" re- made as a moronic action spectacle. Super- cop Sylvester Stallone and supercrook Wesley Snipes wake up from a cryogenic sleep and do battle in a pacified, PC-fied future, where cussing is banned and lovemaking is a hands- off experience. The script (by Daniel Waters, Robert Reneau, and Peter M. Lenkov) simul- taneously mocks and exploits the movie's pre- sold elements, including Stallone's morose brand of machismo. Marco Brambilla directed.-M.S. (Village Theatre VII, 34th Street Showplace, First & 62nd Cinemas, Orpheum VII, Chelsea Cinemas and Criterion Center. .. (jJ 84th Street , Sixplex; through Nov. 11.) FAREWELL My CONCUBINE-Chen Kaige's film is a big, eventful historical soap opera of the "Doctor Zhivago" chool-the sort of drama that uses the unsettled emotional lives of a handful of characters to portray the human cost of war and of constant political upheaval. The movie follows a pair of male Beijing Opera performers, Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi), from their school days, in the nineteen-twenties and early thirties to their farewell performance to- gether, 'in 1977. Chen keeps the action charg- ing forward breathlessly, for m re th.an two and a half hours, and at a certaIn pOlnt you begin to realize that the obvious theatre- versus-life ironies are only a small part of what the movie is about. The real subject is whether it's possible, in times that demand perpetual revolutions in values, to remain true to anyone or anything: an art, an ideal, a friend a wife oneself. In Mandarin.- T.R. , , . (10/11/93) Angelika Film Center, Eastside Playhouse and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.) FATAL INSTIN T-Armand Assante is a cop who's abo a lawyer and Kate Nelligan, Sean Young, and Sherilyn' Fenn are the women in his life. All manage to keep a straight face in this scattershot spoof; unfortunately, o do the moviegoers. The director, Carl Reiner, and the writer, David O'Malley, make the error of sending up film noir classics such a "Doub!e Indemnity" along with contemporary erotIc shockers like "Basic Instinct" and "Fatal Attraction" and dysfunctlOnal-family suspense films like the Scorsese-De Niro "Cape Fear" The old and new styles of thriller-making don't mesh even in lampoon form. When James Rem'ar's imitation De Niro displays tattooed quotes from Pee-wee Herman and